Building environmental awareness, leadership, and action for a healthier future
Creación de conciencia ambiental, liderazgo y acción para un futuro más saludable - Version en español abajo
Peace Corps Mexico has recruited and assigned Environmental Education Volunteers to serve in communities in Mexico since 2010. In general, Volunteers with environmental science, youth, or community engagement backgrounds have been recruited, assigned, and trained to collaborate on outreach and action projects that increase community members’ awareness and understanding about important environmental issues affecting them locally, greater appreciation of local resources, and concrete ways they can both reduce impacts to their local environments as well as their own well-being.
Types of projects that EE Volunteers have focused on historically have included:
- Development of environmental education materials such as curriculum guides, presentations, manuals, maps, and interpretive signage;
- Classes, workshops, and fairs to promote environmental awareness and capacity building for specific skills;
- Environmental activities such as murals, cleanups, gardens, and composts;
- Appropriate green technologies such as ecobrick structures, biofilters, solar ovens and dehydrators, and rainwater capture cisterns
- Youth environmental clubs and leadership skills development
Below are a variety of project descriptions from Volunteers at the conclusion of their projects that provide a window into the type of great work they do in Mexico!
In the area of environmental education materials, Shayna Sellars, Group 13, served from 2012 to 2015 as Volunteer with the SEMARNAT Puebla state office, to develop climate change education curricular guides. Read more about Shayna's work here.
Whitney Vogel, Group 15, served from 2013 to 2015 as a Volunteer with the Nevado de Colima National Park (CONANP). Whitney led efforts to increase park signage and an extensive mural project in a renewed environmental ed center at the park. Click here to learn more about Whitney´s mural project. After her service, Whitney did the logo design not only for our 10th anniversary but also for this year´s 15th anniversary celebration.
Also from Group 15, but serving with the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR) Tlaxco office in Tlaxcala state, Ashley Schnitker created a community project for rainwater capture together with the local ejido (communal land owners´collective). Read her story here.